The Balance Thread

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Evander

Level requirements for Cloth/Leather items were weird already.
Adding stat requirement may complicate things some more, but maybe thats the right way?

Perhaps a lvl requirement should be then lowered a bit?

Wow your comment made me start thinking about items' level requirements.

I think I understand why so many people complain about plate armor not being powerful enough relative to mail. The issue is that there is no level requirement, so you don't get to see how plate is stronger relative to mail. Since mail's requirement is 2 STR per level, and plate's is 3 STR per level, and there's no level requirement activated, people compare mail of much higher level with plate of a lower level and see little difference. This is a real issue. I think level requirements have to be activated there.

Basically, attribute requirements are only good as replacement for level requirement if the attributes are very very high. Even then, they're often not real limits since you can get so many extra bonuses from items. This means that, for example, cloth armor need both the DEX/STR requirements (which are low) and the level requirements. Otherwise a low level warrior with high STR and moderate DEX can easily put on a super cloth armor with massive bonuses.

Basically, this whole requirements business is a minefield. Because some characters can get very high stats, and because items give so many high stat bonuses, relying on any STR/DEX/INT requirements per level is a problem. This is another symptom of having so many stat bonuses on items. Level requirements, on the other hand, are absolute -- they can't be cheated in any way.

Have you seen people on the forum say that DC has very random items? Have you seen the guy (sorry, don't remember who) saying the strongest weapons are staves? The reason is that the stat requirements for those items aren't enough to keep them from the hands of different classes -- even ones at levels that shouldn't be able to handle such items. Staves for example have a DEX requirement of 1.5 per level. That's pretty low. It means that just about any non-mage class can easily obtain staves that are much higher level than what mages can handle. They'll get stronger bonuses from these staves, and sometimes even more damage then they can get from their own weapons.

Of course, this isn't all a bad thing. It's nice to suddenly get that super weapon that helps you do better. The reason that happens is that the weapon is of a higher level, but its stat requirements aren't high enough to prevent you from using it.

I'll have to think about this topic some more, but it's pretty clear to me that things with low stat requirements need to keep their level requirements as well. That includes mail armor, and it also includes my proposed added requirements for cloth and leather armor.

[Evander]

Originally Posted by Bluddy

I think I understand why so many people complain about plate armor not being powerful enough relative to mail. The issue is that there is no level requirement, so you don't get to see how plate is stronger relative to mail. Since mail's requirement is 2 STR per level, and plate's is 3 STR per level, and there's no level requirement activated, people compare mail of much higher level with plate of a lower level and see little difference. This is a real issue. I think level requirements have to be activated there.

heh, that's a very interesting observation.
From what I can tell, high level plate armours are basically superior to anything else.
I have one character wearing Plate that has around 500 armor rating, and it's just an elite item.

Basically this just shows that plate/chain mastery should be armour type specific and that plate mastery skill should have greater bonus.

Basically, attribute requirements are only good as replacement for level requirement if the attributes are very very high. Even then, they're often not real limits since you can get so many extra bonuses from items. This means that, for example, cloth armor need both the DEX/STR requirements (which are low) and the level requirements. Otherwise a low level warrior with high STR and moderate DEX can easily put on a super cloth armor with massive bonuses.

And thats why armor mastery skill should be type-specific.
You can put all the cloths you want on your warrior, but you should not get anything close to the bonus from plate.

Basically, this whole requirements business is a minefield. Because some characters can get very high stats, and because items give so many high stat bonuses, relying on any STR/DEX/INT requirements per level is a problem. This is another symptom of having so many stat bonuses on items. Level requirements, on the other hand, are absolute -- they can't be cheated in any way.

Considering the amount of +all stats items dropping from anything that can drop them, you can put 3 cloth items with +7 stat increase and then add a plate/mail that would otherwise be few levels away from you.
I think it's serious problem here. Magical bonuses are just too big, but in the end they help to survive in high level games, which in turn are imbalanced as you pointed that out.
Above level 75 every regular monster is more like glass cannon and so is a player character.

Have you seen people on the forum say that DC has very random items? Have you seen the guy (sorry, don't remember who) saying the strongest weapons are staves? The reason is that the stat requirements for those items aren't enough to keep them from the hands of different classes -- even ones at levels that shouldn't be able to handle such items. Staves for example have a DEX requirement of 1.5 per level. That's pretty low. It means that just about any non-mage class can easily obtain staves that are much higher level than what mages can handle. They'll get stronger bonuses from these staves, and sometimes even more damage then they can get from their own weapons.

I dont really think that any class with passive skill for any given weapon type would bother with staffs, especially when they can use shields as well.

Btw, I dont know if you know how many epic axes are there. I store epic weapons on mule characters, and 1h axes and 2h axes are amongs most numerous. It seems like most of the ego (monster type specific) weapons are actually axes!

Of course, this isn't all a bad thing. It's nice to suddenly get that super weapon that helps you do better. The reason that happens is that the weapon is of a higher level, but its stat requirements aren't high enough to prevent you from using it.

Thats again the problem with how often magical items are dropping.
If you are playing Thief with Treasure Hunter skill maxed out and you end up in Warehouse dungeon drinking treasure finding elixirs, yellow stuff is dropping from crates and barrels.

I'll have to think about this topic some more, but it's pretty clear to me that things with low stat requirements need to keep their level requirements as well. That includes mail armor, and it also includes my proposed added requirements for cloth and leather armor.

I wouldn't bother with increasing lvl requirement for mails. Rather, plate stuff should have it's armor rating increased a bit.

The problem is as I said, that item requirements are already weird enough. Mess with that and it will blow in your face, have no doubt about that.

It would be way better to look at MagicModifiers and probably decrease +stat bonuses. An item with +20 strength is in fact upping your character 4 levels forward, and that seem to be an issue here.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Evander

heh, that's a very interesting observation.
From what I can tell, high level plate armours are basically superior to anything else.
I have one character wearing Plate that has around 500 armor rating, and it's just an elite item.

It is superior. It's just that because of the strength requirements, characters who are non-warriors will have a hard time using those super plate items and will compare them to mail of very high level, like I said.

Basically this just shows that plate/chain mastery should be armour type specific and that plate mastery skill should have greater bonus.

And thats why armor mastery skill should be type-specific.
You can put all the cloths you want on your warrior, but you should not get anything close to the bonus from plate.

I'm not sure and I'll tell you why -- ultimately the bonus you get from mastery skill isn't that huge even though it seems that way, because it gets translated through the resistance formula.

Cloth armor will never give you anything close to the other armors armor rating wise. But you'll be able to substitute very high level cloth for a lower level armor and get the super stat bonuses because you happen to have high stats (partially from other items).

EDIT: BTW the thing that annoys me about the plate armor or mail armor skill isn't that they affect all armors. It's that having plate armor is not even a choice. It costs a measly 15 points to get plate armor. 15 points out of 1151! You'd have to want to lose to NOT buy it. It might as well just be a starting skill given how cheap it is. IF you needed to buy 10 skill levels to get plate armor, THAT would be an investment and a choice. But unfortunately there's no way to implement that in the game.

Considering the amount of +all stats items dropping from anything that can drop them, you can put 3 cloth items with +7 stat increase and then add a plate/mail that would otherwise be few levels away from you.
I think it's serious problem here. Magical bonuses are just too big, but in the end they help to survive in high level games, which in turn are imbalanced as you pointed that out.
Above level 75 every regular monster is more like glass cannon and so is a player character.

Yep. Well, the first way to fix that is to reduce the crazy amount of DPS some characters are getting. People shouldn't be able to kick butt 20 or 30 or 50 levels above them. It just shouldn't be possible. It's a sign of imbalance. Part of that will be accomplished through balancing the scaling skills. The other part will be balancing items.

I dont really think that any class with passive skill for any given weapon type would bother with staffs, especially when they can use shields as well.

Btw, I dont know if you know how many epic axes are there. I store epic weapons on mule characters, and 1h axes and 2h axes are amongs most numerous. It seems like most of the ego (monster type specific) weapons are actually axes!

Interesting. It does seem like there are more axe artifacts than any other weapon type.

Staffs are useful because their requirements are so low. You can get a super staff with tons of bonus enhancements and start using it at a low level, if you have a non-mage character.

Thats again the problem with how often magical items are dropping.
If you are playing Thief with Treasure Hunter skill maxed out and you end up in Warehouse dungeon drinking treasure finding elixirs, yellow stuff is dropping from crates and barrels.

Treasure hunting skill is indeed ridiculous. When I get to it, I'm going to nerf the heck out of that thing It probably shouldn't even be a skill given the amount of treasure in the game. If good loot was rare however, then it'd be worth something.

I wouldn't bother with increasing lvl requirement for mails. Rather, plate stuff should have it's armor rating increased a bit.

Right. I'm not thinking about increasing lvl requirement -- just making it visible. It's there, it's just calculated as a STR requirement of 2 per level. But most classes who have mail easily have 2 STR per level, so effectively there is no level requirement.

It would be way better to look at MagicModifiers and probably decrease +stat bonuses. An item with +20 strength is in fact upping your character 4 levels forward, and that seem to be an issue here.

I agree the bonuses are too high. It's to the point that your original stat choices almost don't matter sometimes. But even almost as importantly, the bonuses are a problem because each item can give you up to 6 bonuses. This way, with 19 slots, even a small bonus from each item adds up to something big. If the max number of bonuses per item was 3, then even if they went pretty high towards the end game, they'd be much more directed, and they wouldn't stack all over each other.

In any case I don't want to mess with this stuff before I'm done balancing the spells. If I change too many variables at once, I'll make things impossible to balance. The only thing I want to change right now is making the cloth and leather items have DEX and STR requirements, and this only to foil the mage who thinks he can get away with buying nothing but INT and VIT and ruining the game for himself.

[Bluddy]

So here's what I think the general problem with item requirements is: they're trying to do too many things at once:

a) Level requirements are absolute, but cannot be thwarted. They also seem arbitrary. It makes more sense to a player if a character can't use a dagger because they don't have the DEX for it than just being told they're not at the right level. However, they're the best way of preventing high level items from being (ab)used by characters for whom those items will cause serious OP.

b) Stat requirements can also be used to limit the usage of high powered items by low level characters. However, this usage of stat requirements is pretty weak, especially given the parameters of this game. Because there are so many class combinations, and because items give such huge stat bonuses, many characters can 'cheat the system' by attaining the stat way before the planned level. A great example is the staves, which have an STR limit of 1.5 per level. Any warrior will easily have that limit, so they'll be able to wield extremely powerful staves early on. Another example is mail armor, which only has a requirement of 2 per level. Most warriors can easily handle that as well. They'll use much higher level armor and think it's more powerful than it is.

c) Stat requirements have another side to them, which is the flipside of the previous point. If you can work to attain the stat requirements needed for an item, you feel rewarded by being finally able to wield that item/weapon. That's the good side of 'cheating the system'. In general, you want the character to be able to get items that are several levels above what it's supposed to have, if the character works for it ie. invests in the right stats or uses items to get bonuses (though that's a little too easy nowadays).

d) Stat requirements can also be used to assure a certain investment pattern by the character. This is what I want to do with cloth and leather. By setting their requirements to 1 DEX and 1 STR per level, I don't make it hard for any character to get those items, but I want to make sure that a mage can't invest all his points just in INT or VIT if he wants to have those items. Of course they can still use jewelry to get those stats. I'll leave that out for now.

In general, no weapons actively use level requirements. They all translate them into stat requirements. Because of how easy it is for some classes to get stat bonuses, and because of bonuses from items, many characters wield weapons that are far more powerful than what they should have, which is part of the reason for insane DPS.

Consider bows as an example. Bows are interesting, since only the ranger class can use them. They therefore can't be abused by other classes so much. Bows have a DEX per level requirement of 3, which is pretty high. But that means that if you happen to cross an archer with a thief subclass, you'll probably have much more DEX, and you'll be able to get much better bows and therefore better DPS than any other ranger. That doesn't really make sense.

Actually, it makes some sense, but only to a degree. My conclusion is that stat limits are fun when used for (c), and useful when used for (d), but they don't serve the purpose of limiting usage (b). It's nice to have some wiggle room; it's nice to be able to afford that more powerful weapon because you have a high stat. But that wiggle room needs to be limited by a real level requirement in all cases, to prevent abuse and OP. And the level requirement should be a little lower than what the real level of the item is, to give you the wiggle room. It's actually doable with the current system, but I don't think I'll mess with it until I'm done with the skills. For now I'll just change the cloth armor requirements.

And now back to skill balancing...

[Bluddy]

As usual, when I follow up my theoretical observations with real testing I get a lot of useful info.

It turns out that the game really doesn't drop items that are much higher than your level. So it's not much of an issue. It IS an issue for the stash, which allows you to give low level characters higher level items. Without a level requirement, this can be abused. Even worse, it can be abused unfairly. For example, mail and plate armor can be abused (though it's unlikely for plate armor since the requirement is high) but leather and cloth have level requirements, making it impossible to wear higher level cloth or leather armor.

I still think all items should have level requirements slightly lower than their level, and stat requirements at their level, so that there's a range of character levels that can use those items.

[Bluddy]

I updated the mod to have stat requirements for cloth and leather, adjusted spell damage values a little to reduce their spread, and readjusted resistances: it turns out my formula was off after Shadow's changes. I changed the formula and the monsters' resistances to match the changes.

The latest version is 19.

[Evander]

Bluddy, have you noticed, that spells damage is not dependant on INT?

It seems that we are missing sort of Magic Attack modifier that could make all this balancing sort of easier.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Evander

Bluddy, have you noticed, that spells damage is not dependant on INT?

It seems that we are missing sort of Magic Attack modifier that could make all this balancing sort of easier.

Perhaps it would, but then INT would affect magic twice: once in damage output and once in the number of spells you can cast (mana). +Once in crits. I guess you could say crits affect spell damage. Plus, given cast time gloves, mana really becomes a factor in how much damage you can dish out.

Another solution that's been raised is that mage damage should depend on staff damage. I think that's not a bad solution, but it does make a mage just like a warrior (or actually, a ranger).

So the balance issue has more to do with balancing between half-mage and full mage mana quantities. But I figured out what needs to be done.

The mana quantities need to be adjusted to a reasonable full mage's level. I already made it near impossible to invest only in INT and VIT with the item requirements. I'm pretty happy with that. Now I need to adjust it so that a full mage can depend fully on spells without going OP.

A half-mage will have to choose. If he wants to depend only on spells, he'll have to invest a lot in INT. If he prefers to be a middle-of the road mage, he can't depend just on the spells. He needs the other class to carry half the load.

[Bluddy]

I keep on going back and forth about this point. Should I go back to the way Shadow does things in terms of skill points, or should I stick with what I did?

Essentially, my changes have been to make all powerful spells scale up with their costs. Let's take maelstrom for example. It costs 8 skill points. This means that to get it up to full level (20) would cost around 1/3 or your skill points. To use just 1/5 of your skill points, which is what I like to use as my guide, would take around 15 levels. My approach would be to make it such that by level 15, maelstrom is close to the maximum power needed.

Actually I take it one step further. Since maelstrom is basically the strongest spell in the game, I make its cost much higher. It costs 10 points, with points going up 2 between skill levels. That means the first level will cost 10, the next 12, and then 14 etc. With this cost system, 1/5 of your skill points will be spent by level 12. If you try to overpower the spell to level 16, you'd have spent 1/3 of your skill points. I scale the spell power appropriately, so that by level 12 maelstrom is already about powerful enough for the endgame (but not too powerful).

I like my system, because it means that since maelstrom is so expensive, you don't get to (or need to) upgrade it that often in the game. Instead you focus on the cheaper spells most of the time. The problem is that Shadow is very unlikely to implement these changes, so maybe it's better to go back to his method.

The issue I haven't touched is fire mastery. It's still way too overpowered in the main game. In my mod, I allow it to add a maximum of 30% power if you take it all the way up, and even that's a lot. In the main game, it adds 200% of power at full level. This means that it's still the dominant skill. Playing a mage without mastery is still impractical.

[Bluddy]

BTW just to correct what I said before, the reason weapons seem random is NOT that you suddenly get a weapon that's many levels higher than what you expected, though that can happen using the stash or trading, as discussed, and I think I'll eventually fix that loophole.

The reason it happens is because you can sometimes get more than one modifier for damage, like one for max damage and one for damage generally. This can make even a low level weapon extremely strong.

Also, I realized that there are 2 non-scaling skills/spells that cause physical damage: gut and bone shatter. The thing is, the monsters can take much more physical damage than elemental damage. This is a good thing, because it's an equalizer for mages: because of the monsters' low resistances, they're much easier for mages to kill than for warriors. It also means that elemental damage from magic weapons is very valuable.

However, what it also means is that any spell/skill that deals out physical damage needs to cause much more damage. I have to graph the monsters' effective HP as a result of their armor to see how much damage these 2 skills should do.